Narcissistic Wound: Is There a Heaven? Uh...

Monday, January 5, 2009

Is There a Heaven? Uh...

I just wrote a piece for Babble about kids and the whole God thing. One reader advised me to look into Mormonism. Check it out, if you have a moment. Love to know what you think.

http://babble.com/How-to-explain-God-to-kids-no-matter-what-your-beliefs/index.aspx

1 comment:

trofimarJanuary 8, 2009 at 7:48 AM
Good article.
I think everyone chooses its own God... one day or stays with the one that they have since they were kids...
I am very ambiguous about the details when I talk to my son...But the truth to me is that is good to have these conversations... and in or case to believe in reincarnation, Someone UPThere who is loving and helpful...
strange that somehow God was always with me but I kind of ignored him... choosing to be on my own... having child I need all the help i can get and Spirituality seems to be very helpful, even if I use it to get hm no to be afraid flying airplanes...
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Stop picking at it, for Godssakes!

Those of us born between 1965 and 1977 (though some research firms put the end birth-date as far out as 1981) comprise Generation X, the age-group that’s so small that it’s a sociological sentence fragment. But, as the old quip goes: we may not be much, but we’re all we think about. According to market research firms and sociologists alike, Generation X takes everything personally, narcissistically.

It is a hard truism that a generation is shaped by its war. The Silent Generation (1929-1943) was forged by the Great War; Baby Boomers (1944-1964) were defined by Vietnam and the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. Generation X’s war was the ultimate war-at-home: divorce. We didn’t get Purple Hearts or red badges of courage, nothing that could be culturally shared or healed. We got narcissistic injuries: private, secret, solitary.

Generation X, according to a 2004 study of generational differences, "went through its all-important, formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history." Half of all Gen-X children's families split; forty-percent were latch-key kids. Outdoors, there was crack, AIDS, homelessness, racial conflict, Reaganomics. Indoors was the mall, in roving packs. Home? Alone, watching program-length commercials ("Transformers: More than meets the eye!"). “More than this,” crooned Bryan Ferry in Roxy Music’s eponymous 80s lullaby, “there is nothing.”

It’s an axiom from Psychology 101 that if you want to learn what is unhealed from your own childhood, have children. In psychological terms, this is known as a narcissistic injury. In her seminal text on the subject, The Drama of the Gifted Child, the psychologist Alice Miller describes adults who sustained such childhood wounds:

"They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that it no longer exists. They are continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time. They are driven by unconscious memories and by repressed feelings and needs that determine nearly everything they do or fail to do." (p. 2)

Good times. What can you do to get rid of this thing? I'm on that navel-gazing, scab-picking quest. Join me.

Narcissistic Wound

Monday, January 5, 2009

Is There a Heaven? Uh...

1 comment:

Stop picking at it, for Godssakes!

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